Grace stopped mid-stride, her hand gripping the door handle tightly. I paused, just around the corner from where she stood. Grace closed her eyes, her breath coming fast, before she turned stiffly. Her jaw locked when she faced them.
The two guys who’d been ordering at the counter had both turned. One wore a leering expression. The other eyed Grace up and down.
“It is you.” The taller one, with sandy blond hair and a dirty T-shirt said. He leaned his hip against the counter. “With so many clothes on, I barely recognized you.”
Tears sprouted in Grace’s eyes.
My hands balled into fists, anger rising in my gut when the other one laughed, but Grace just shrank back before shoving into the door and barreling through it.
The two guys continued to laugh after she ran. I curled my lip, the fire rising in my mind. With the flick of a thought, I could start them on fire.
But both guys turned back to the counter, still laughing, oblivious to the fact that I could roast them like barbeque. I took a deep breath, struggling to get myself under control, then rounded the corner and pushed through the double doors.
Outside, the wind cut into my skin like icy needles. Grace was already halfway back to the car.
Picking up a jog, I hurried to catch up with her. When I reached her side, she stood by the car’s door, breathing heavily with her eyes squeezed tightly shut.
“Grace?”
She jumped, a shriek escaping her lips. “Oh. Raven. I didn’t see you there.”
The wind whipped around, throwing her hair’s long thick tendrils around her face. An embarrassed flush tinted her cheeks, but she smiled, or tried to. The muscles quivered in her cheeks, her expression looking forced. “Is the car done charging?”
I frowned and glanced back at the restaurant, thinking of the douchebags who’d just humiliated her. My nostrils flared, the cold wind flowing into me. I was on the brink of turning back, of telling them exactly what I thought of how they’d treated her, when Grace’s hand shot out, grasping my arm.
“You heard, didn’t you?”
The feel of her hand on my arm made me pause. Steely strength ran through her grip, her clenching fingers desperate.
“Yeah, I did.”
Her chin dropped, her eyes closing again. “Can we go?” she asked quietly.
My stomach tightened, but not from nervousness. Seeing the absolute dejection on her face, and her complete humiliation and pain . . .
I wanted to step closer to her, wrap her up in my arms, and kiss away all of the hurt.
But I wasn’t her boyfriend. I wasn’t anyone important to her. I was just the guy giving her a ride, and that was it.
CHAPTER THREE
We pulled out of the charging station and merged back onto the interstate. Snow blew over the road like wispy clouds. We headed deeper into the mountains, as an overcast sky above illuminated the winding road that stretched progressively skyward.
“The weather can change on a dime out here.” Grace fiddled with her jacket’s zipper, her attention still out the window. “You can have four seasons in one day.”
I kept my hand on the steering wheel, but my gaze kept drifting her way. What those guys had said at the fast food joint still weighed heavily on my mind. “Did you grow up out here?”
She fiddled more with the zipper. “I spent my entire childhood in these mountains. I thought I’d never see them again.”
I gripped the wheel harder, wanting so badly to know what caused that catch in her voice. “So if you haven’t visited since before college, does that mean the last time you saw your parents was when you were eighteen?”
She wrapped her arms more tightly around her middle, her jacket making a crinkling sound. “I left before that.”
I frowned as we banked around a turn. All of this was new to me. Lena had told me a lot about Grace, knowing how much I was crushing for her, but she’d never mentioned anything about Grace never traveling home or that she’d left her parents’ house before beginning college. I wondered if Lena even knew that.
I slowed the Tesla, the road growing steeper and curvier. “If you left before you went to college, where did you go?”
Grace leaned forward, grabbing her purse from the floor. She pulled out her planner, a few color coded tabs sticking up from the top. Flipping it open, she extracted the pen latched to the side. “You know, I was thinking, I should keep track of what you’ve paid for on this trip and write it down. I can also keep track of the mileage and reimburse you per mile. I’d feel better if I paid my way.”
Her planner displayed lists on each page. Columns and charts, filled with her neat handwriting, made her stark organizational skills apparent. Even the lists were color coded, every dip and angle from her handwritten letters precise and clean.
I waited for her to answer my question, to tell me more about her life before she’d met Lena and my family, but her brow furrowed and she remained silent.
She held the planner up, concentrating on making her letters tiny and perfectly aligned, but I still caught how her fingers trembled, and when we hit a bump in the road, her pen waivered and a smudge of ink shot across the page.
“Shoot,” she whispered. She pulled a bottle of whiteout from her purse, carefully applying it to the smudge.
I watched the painstaking process as she meticulously worked to make her planner as orderly and pristine as possible.
“Lena told me you were organized.”
She applied another careful stroke of the whiteout. “I like things to be in order.”
Lifting her pen again, she wrote tiny numbers, and with a start, I realized she’d already calculated how much her meal had cost at lunch, including the tax.
I gripped the wheel harder as she next grabbed her phone. She pulled up her maps app and figured out the mileage from Boulder to her parents’ house.
My stomach twisted. “Grace? You don’t need to pay me back. I don’t care about the money. Please. Don’t keep track of what I’ve bought you or how many miles I’ve driven. I just want to help you get home. I don’t want anything in return.”
When I said the word home, her movements stopped. Her finger hovered over her phone’s screen as her mouth tightened. “But keeping track of things and paying close attention to how I spend money is necessary. It’s how I’ve survived.”
My frown deepened. It’s how I’ve survived.
Survived. That was an interesting choice of words.
“Are you talking about after you left your parents? Or how you pay for things now while you’re in college?”
With jerky movements, she stored her phone away before neatly aligning her planner back in her purse. Grabbing my cell phone, she held it out to me. “Should we finish that audiobook? We’ll be there in about an hour.”
Eyebrows knitting together, I begrudgingly entered my passcode, and the narrator’s voice again filled the cab. Grace settled back in her seat, her legs angled toward the window. She clasped her thin hands tightly in her lap, but her knee subtly jostled up and down, the movement tiny but noticeable.
As we wove deeper into the mountains, she clasped her hands harder and harder until the blue veins on the backs of her hands poked starkly out, reminding me of blue ropes, like a hangman’s noose waiting for an execution.
~ ~ ~
Early afternoon arrived when the GPS indicated our destination was only a mile away. Thick trees grew along the side of the road, their branches naked and bare in winter, only the thick pines’ foliage shone dark green. The rest of the land spread out before us, covered in white snow and broken up by jagged granite peaks.
I paused the audiobook, not being able to concentrate on the story anyway. Grace sat immobile, staring out the window. She didn’t seem to notice when I turned the book off.
“Are we close to your parent’s house?”
“It’s just up there.” Her voice came out in a hoarse whisper, her face pale.
I slowed the car on the narrow highway as an old me
tal mailbox appeared, poking out of a snowbank. The flag dangled from a broken screw. If the snowbank hadn’t supported the mailbox, propping it upright, I wouldn’t have been surprise if it tipped over. But one thing was apparent, it was the only mailbox out here.
“This is it.” Her knees pinched together as her gaze stayed trained ahead.
I pulled onto a snowy, single lane driveway that snaked through the trees. The packed snow didn’t make a sound as we trailed deeper into the woods. Nobody else appeared to live out here. I hadn’t seen another house for miles.
“Any neighbors close by?”
Grace sat up straighter but kept her attention forward. “The closest one is three miles west.”
A moment later, the trees thinned and a small house appeared. Peeling paint flaked from the wooden clapboard siding, and a sloping porch hinted at neglect. Rusty junk surrounded the entire property, and an old empty bird feeder hung from a pole, teetering against a snow pile only a dozen feet away.
I rolled the car to a stop, the motor silent. “Is this it?”
Grace swallowed, her jaw tightening. An old screen door banged against the front door, the rickety movement caught in a never ending breeze. The faint tap tap from it came through the windows.
“This is it.” Grace unlatched her seatbelt, her face pale and her hands trembling.
“Is it okay if I park here?”
Her movements stopped, her little tongue darting out to lick her lips. “You can just drop me off. If you can come back tomorrow, I’ll be ready to go.”
Before I could reply, she grabbed her purse and shot out the door. She hurried to the back of the car waiting for the trunk to open.
Reluctantly, I released it. With stiff arms, she retrieved her bag before slamming the trunk closed. On wooden-like legs, she walked carefully on the packed snow toward the front door. When her thin frame climbed the sagging steps, her hand clung tightly to her bags.
I didn’t back out. I couldn’t. It didn’t feel right to leave her here, but when Grace reached the front door and twisted the door handle, she looked over her shoulder.
Even from the distance, her blue eyes shone wide and luminous. With a pinched mouth, she nodded up the road, indicating for me to go.
Nostrils flaring, I reversed and swung back around. Through the rearview mirror, I watched her. She stood in the open doorway, watching me, as if making sure that I left.
I knew that she didn’t consider me her boyfriend and hadn’t wanted me to come along on this trip, but something about all of this didn’t feel right. It felt damned wrong.
When I pulled back onto the highway, a sick feeling rolled in my stomach. I made it about a mile down the road before I slammed on the breaks and did a u-turn.
CHAPTER FOUR
I pulled back into the driveway, the car crawling slowly up the single lane like a soldier sneaking across the battle line. The house appeared through the trees again, silent and still. Pulling forward, I parked by the old garage and cut the engine.
When I stepped out, the cold air cut through my lungs like a knife. Wind rushed through the towering trees, highlighting the vast silence. Only a few bird calls penetrated the breeze. My feet crunched into the snow as I walked to the front door. The creaking porch squeaked when my feet thudded softly on their swollen wooden treads.
At the front door, I raised my hand to knock but a sharp thud came from inside. I paused, my fist hovering over the door as I listened.
Another thud came, followed by a faint scream, then a man’s muffled yell.
My pulse leaped. When the yelling continued, I didn’t stop to knock. My hand grasped the door handle and wrenched it open. I flew into the small home, stopping momentarily when the scent of cigarette smoke assaulted me.
“What the hell?” a man yelled. He stood in the kitchen, visible through the cluttered living room I’d barreled into.
On the dirty kitchen floor lay Grace.
Blood trickled down the side of her mouth, her top lip already swelling as a bruise bloomed across her cheek.
The fire rushed up inside me, my anger making me want to burn everything in my path. He’d hit her. Within a second, I was at her side, kneeling down as she stared up at me with dazed eyes.
“Raven?” she croaked.
In the corner of the kitchen, huddled a feeble looking gray-haired woman. She had her hands over her ears as she cowered, curled up in the fetal position.
“Who the hell are you?” The man, who I could only assume was Grace’s father, loomed over us in his sweat-stained clothes. “Get the hell out of my house!”
I cradled Grace to me and stood. She clung tightly to my arms, her entire body trembling.
Her father advanced. I pushed Grace behind me, widening my stance in case he tried to swing at her again.
Her father stopped, his lip curling. Yellow teeth appeared. He pushed his greasy hair back before balling his hands into fists. We stood close to eye-level, but whereas his belly protruded from old age and too much alcohol, mine was flat and hard, thanks to the conditioning training I did daily with Jet and Jasper.
Being careful to keep Grace out of the way, I readied for a fight in case he started swinging. Her father looked down, eyeing my fisted hands.
Taking a step back, he grabbed a half-smoked cigarette from an ashtray on the kitchen table and took a drag. “Is this another one of your boyfriends, Grace?” He blew a cloud of smoke in my face. “You like sluts, is that it?”
I flinched. “She’s not a slut.”
He took another drag. “You sure about that?”
“Darren, don’t!” the woman wailed from the corner.
Grace’s father swung around, his meaty arms tightening. “Keep your mouth shut, woman!”
Grace’s mother curled into a ball again, her thin arms shielding her face.
Behind me, Grace gripped my shirt. Even though I stood in front of her, I felt her shaking. “I just want to see her,” Grace said, her voice pleading. “She’s sick, Dad. Please, let me see her.”
“She’s not sick!” Her father took a step toward Grace, but I shifted, blocking him. “She’s faking it, pretending to be sick so she doesn’t have to do any work around here, and I told you before—whores aren’t allowed under my roof so you best get out.”
“But she’s sick!”
His jaw tightened, his jowls jiggling with the movement. He paused, his head cocking. A moment passed before he asked in a low voice, “How did you know she was sick anyway?” He swung toward Grace’s mother again. “Did you call her? Is that what you did? Told your little girl to rush home because you don’t feel well?”
Grace’s mom curled more into herself, not making a sound.
Grace peeked her head out from around me, but she still held onto my shirt, her hands staying on my waist as though I was the only thing that kept her father from knocking her out. “Please, dad! Please! Just let me take her with me. Let me take her to the hospital.”
Her father rounded on us again. My pulse leaped, and my heart drummed in my chest. I shot my arm out when he made a move to grab his daughter.
Smirking, he pulled back. “Your mother’s not going anywhere, Grace.” He met my gaze, blowing smoke from his cigarette again. “Why don’t you take this hussy back where you found her, pretty boy? Sluts aren’t allowed under my roof.”
~ ~ ~
I kept my arm around Grace, making sure to keep distance from her father while I helped her out the front door. She didn’t say a word, but she held onto me, her legs giving way on the porch steps.
Supporting her weight, I wrapped my arm protectively around her shoulders and got her in the car. She folded into the front seat, her legs and arms stiff, and she didn’t protest when I buckled her seat belt.
When I stood and slammed her door, I felt someone watching me. Swinging around, I made eye contact with her father again. He stood in the doorway, watching us from the porch while taking drags from his cigarette. A cardinal trilled from one of the trees
, the serene winter bird song completely out of place at this hellacious home.
I had no idea where Grace’s mother waited—perhaps still cowering in the kitchen corner, perhaps peeking through the window in the living room—but I knew she wasn’t safe here.
I debated going back inside to try and retrieve her, but I felt fairly certain Grace’s father and I would come to blows if I did that, and right now, my concern was for Grace. I needed to get her out of here.
Locking my jaw, I slid into the driver’s seat and backed out. Grace sat immobile, her body slumped to the side, as I drove us back to Casper.
It took forty-five minutes to reach town. I stopped at the first hotel I found and booked a room. Grace didn’t seem aware of me helping her out of the car and up the stairs as winter wind blew around us.
Once inside, she sat on the bed. It was only then I saw the silent tears streaming down her cheeks.
“She’s sick, Raven. Really sick, and he won’t do anything to help her.” She covered her face with her hands as silent sobs shook her shoulders.
My stomach rolled in anger. I’d never seen Grace like this before. Not broken or helpless. Never like this. She’d always been cheerful and kind, alert and on top of things. I couldn’t remember her ever not helping Lena, taking care of my sister at times since Lena could be so erratic and disorganized.
But the Grace I saw now, the Grace who sat before me, was a shell of the beautiful woman I’d been falling in love with for the past six months. This Grace was broken and battered, and I hated the man who’d done that to her.
I crouched in front of her. “Do you know what’s wrong with your mom?”
Another tear rolled down her cheek. “Cancer. My mom managed to sneak out a few weeks ago, when my father was gone on a hunting trip. She went to the hospital. They did scans and blood tests. She has stage two cancer, an aggressive kind, but he won’t let her get treatment. She called me yesterday afternoon to tell me goodbye and said she wanted to see me one last time before she died, because she knew the cancer was going to kill her.”
The Complete Lost Children Series Page 103
